Multiple sources report the Mumbai–Ahmedabad bullet train line is facing severe difficulties, and the completion date has been pushed to late 2028. To our Indian members, what do you think of this? Is this true? Will the project face cancellation if costs further escalate and more delays become inevitable?
India’s bullet train faces 5-year delay: High costs, Japan firms not so keen
The Indian Express has learnt that the Railways now expects the project to be commissioned fully by October 2028, instead of the original timeline of December 2023.
Avishek G Dastidar
FROM LOW participation by Japanese companies to tenders cancelled because of steep rates quoted by bidders, India’s first bullet train project is stuck on multiple fronts — and staring at a delay of around five years.
The Indian Express has learnt that the Railways now expects the project to be commissioned fully by October 2028, instead of the original timeline of December 2023. The revised timeline has been estimated after talks with the Japanese team that is working on the project, sources said.
“We can maybe compress the timeline to some extent if all the outstanding issues are resolved quickly. But in such a complex technical project, the timeline cannot be compressed to a great extent,” a senior official told The Indian Express.
Read | 52 workers test positive for Covid-19 at bullet train site
The 508-km Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail Corridor is being constructed with an 80 per cent loan from Japan at 0.1 per cent interest and a 15-year moratorium, with the system to be built mostly with Japanese technology on the lines of the Shinkansen.
India had been keen on opening at least a portion of the project by August 2022, to coincide with 75 years of Independence. And the Railways officially maintains that the original timeline is still in place.
“As per the feasibility study, the target date for the completion of the project is December 2023,” said a spokesperson of the National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL), the implementing agency, which was set up in 2016 with equity participation by the Rail Ministry and the Maharashtra and Gujarat governments.
However, The Indian Express has learnt that the tender for the most crucial section — a 21-km underground stretch, including a seven-km section under the sea near Mumbai — did not find Japanese participation and could not be finalised in the first attempt earlier this year.
Read | Surat farmer leader who fought against land acquisition for bullet train project joins BJP
Besides, in many of the 11 tenders originally meant to be executed by Japanese companies, the prices quoted were up to 90 per cent higher than estimates indicated by the project consultants. India has refused to accept the huge escalation, it is learnt.
The construction of the 21-km stretch alone would require large, advanced boring machines that would employ a special technical method to safeguard a flamingo sanctuary nearby in Maharashtra — this would require over 60 months to complete, as per latest assessments.
The other area of concern is procurement of rolling stock. As per the Japanese, only Kawasaki and Hitachi are eligible to supply the trains. However, it was found out that both companies could jointly submit only one bid, leading to a single-tender situation, which the Indian side wanted to either avoid or a call to be taken “at the highest level”, sources said.
A Joint Committee Meeting between India and Japan, which could not take place earlier this year before the Covid outbreak, is expected to resolve the outstanding issues as they are beyond the purview of the Ministry or the implementing agency, sources said.
“A clearer picture on the possible delay will emerge only after the next Joint Committee Meeting between the two countries,” an official said.
Read | Bullet train project: Palghar finalises draft plan for acquisition of land
Sources also said that the stepping down of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe due to health reasons will not officially affect the deliberations. However, they acknowledged that it was Abe’s personal rapport with Prime Minister Narendra Modi that helped push the project in many critical areas.
According to the original feasibility study, work was supposed to have started by December 2017. But currently, only about 100 hectares of the required 430 hectares have been acquired in Maharashtra. In Gujarat, owing to active support of the state government, the process to acquire close to 1,000 hectares will be complete by the year-end.
The Railways has also taken a policy decision to allow Indian companies to participate in tenders for civil construction, including the 21-km tunnel stretch and tracks. Three critical civil work tenders for the Mumbai station, and other large sections of the project, are scheduled to be opened in September.
Referring to the progress achieved so far, the NHSRCL spokesperson said: “About 63 per cent land has been acquired for the project and tenders for civil works for 345 km out of 508 km alignment (68 per cent of civil works) are already floated. This includes six stations (including one underground station in Mumbai). The works related to utility diversion are progressing well and the construction of Sabarmati passenger hub in Sabarmati has also started. The hostel building of High Speed Training Institute (which is presently being used for Covid patients) and training tracks in Vadodara are also completed.”
India’s first high-speed project falls behind
Completion of India’s first high-speed line, linking Mumbai with Ahmedabad, could take five years longer than expected, mainly due to delays in acquiring land in the state of Maharashtra. Srinand Jha explains the ramifications of the delay and the problems this will cause.
TRIAL running is expected to start on a 50km section of the 508km Mumbai – Ahmedabad high-speed line – India’s first high-speed rail project – between Surat and Bilimoria in the state of Gujarat by 2023-24. However, it looks as though passengers will have to wait a lot longer than expected to travel on the entire line.
Indications are that the completion deadline of the Rs 1.08 trillion ($US 14.3bn) project, which is funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica), will be extended by five years from December 2023 to December 2028. Mr Achal Khare, managing director of India’s National High Speed Rail Corporation Ltd (NHSRCL) said as much in a recent interview. “We would try to do something by 2023-24,” he said, hinting at plans to launch limited trial runs around that time.
Execution of the project appears to be going at a tangent. For example, while 94% of civil works contracts for the 384km Gujarat portion of the line have been awarded, revised estimates for project costs have yet to be calculated. “This is like putting the cart before the horse and could lead to future complications including possible litigation issues,” says a former Indian Railways (IR) official, who did not wish to be quoted.
In past months, the India government has pushed for the entry of domestic private entities in areas such as construction of steel bridges and viaducts, while the 2017 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) says that these structures would only be constructed by Japanese contractors using materials including cement and steel imported from Japan.
Eyebrows have also been raised at the NHSRCL’s approach in unofficially dividing the project into Gujarat and Maharashtra (156km) packages, while deciding to implement the Gujarat portion first. Last month, the NHSRCL signed an agreement with Japan Railway Track Consultants (JRTC) for track work on the 237km stretch between Vadodara and Vapi in Gujarat. Incidentally, sanction from the Indian Cabinet has not been obtained for such decisions. According to ministry sources, railways minister, Mr Piyush Goyal, is said to be unhappy with some of the decisions taken by the NHSRCL.
Land acquisition
The India-Japan MoU includes the precondition that civil works can start only after 80% of the land required for the project has been acquired. But the NHSRCL had acquired only 23% of the total land requirement of 432Ha in Maharashtra up to February.
With unending tussles over land acquisition in Maharashtra state and continuing disagreement between India and Japan over revised project costs, the two countries have apparently decided to hit the ground without waiting for critical issues to be resolved. At face value, this is a sensible idea except when one looks at the fine print.
“Partial opening of a standalone HSR line would be meaningless and would hold only symbolic value,” says rail consultant and former IR manager, Mr Sudhanshu Mani, who is known as the pioneer of India’s indigenous Train-18 180km/h EMU project. “Such an approach would also lead to an extension of the completion targets.”
The revised approach on project delivery apparently suits both India and Japan. In the midst of the raging coronavirus pandemic, India finds advantage in kick-starting the project prematurely in order to revive its sagging economy, even though Jica will apparently need to pump in funds to cover the tender contracts that have been awarded for the Gujarat section.
Facing negative interest rates, Japan is apparently keen on getting to work on the 26km underground section from Bandra Kurla Complex to Kalyan Shilphata in Mumbai. This Rs 220bn section will enable Japan to demonstrate its high-speed rail technology. Japan also wants to get on with manufacture of the fleet of series E5 Shinkansen trains to operate the line. India is committed to buying 49 trains at an estimated cost of Rs 100bn. Six of the trains will be supplied as kits and assembled in India.
Khare, who retires in June, will also have the chance to leave a legacy as an action oriented official. NHSRCL spokesperson, Ms Sushma Gaur, says the corporation is attempting to extract the best in the challenging circumstances. “The entry of Indian players will bring down costs and also further India’s goal of being a self-reliant country,” she says.
However, former Railway Board member, Mr Subodh Jain, has a different opinion. “Such an approach may earn brownie points for policy makers in the short run, but will eventually hurt the project,” he predicts.
Project data
Line length 508.1km
Elevated 469.4km
Tunnel 25.8km
Embankment/cutting 12.9km
Stations 12
Maximum speed 320km/h
Journey time (limited stop) 1h 58min
Journey time (all stations) 2h 57min
Trains 24 10-car
Passengers/train 750
Trains/day/direction – peak 3
Trains/day/direction –
off-peak 2
India’s bullet train faces 5-year delay: High costs, Japan firms not so keen
The Indian Express has learnt that the Railways now expects the project to be commissioned fully by October 2028, instead of the original timeline of December 2023.
Avishek G Dastidar
FROM LOW participation by Japanese companies to tenders cancelled because of steep rates quoted by bidders, India’s first bullet train project is stuck on multiple fronts — and staring at a delay of around five years.
The Indian Express has learnt that the Railways now expects the project to be commissioned fully by October 2028, instead of the original timeline of December 2023. The revised timeline has been estimated after talks with the Japanese team that is working on the project, sources said.
“We can maybe compress the timeline to some extent if all the outstanding issues are resolved quickly. But in such a complex technical project, the timeline cannot be compressed to a great extent,” a senior official told The Indian Express.
Read | 52 workers test positive for Covid-19 at bullet train site
The 508-km Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail Corridor is being constructed with an 80 per cent loan from Japan at 0.1 per cent interest and a 15-year moratorium, with the system to be built mostly with Japanese technology on the lines of the Shinkansen.
India had been keen on opening at least a portion of the project by August 2022, to coincide with 75 years of Independence. And the Railways officially maintains that the original timeline is still in place.
“As per the feasibility study, the target date for the completion of the project is December 2023,” said a spokesperson of the National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL), the implementing agency, which was set up in 2016 with equity participation by the Rail Ministry and the Maharashtra and Gujarat governments.
However, The Indian Express has learnt that the tender for the most crucial section — a 21-km underground stretch, including a seven-km section under the sea near Mumbai — did not find Japanese participation and could not be finalised in the first attempt earlier this year.
Read | Surat farmer leader who fought against land acquisition for bullet train project joins BJP
Besides, in many of the 11 tenders originally meant to be executed by Japanese companies, the prices quoted were up to 90 per cent higher than estimates indicated by the project consultants. India has refused to accept the huge escalation, it is learnt.
The construction of the 21-km stretch alone would require large, advanced boring machines that would employ a special technical method to safeguard a flamingo sanctuary nearby in Maharashtra — this would require over 60 months to complete, as per latest assessments.
The other area of concern is procurement of rolling stock. As per the Japanese, only Kawasaki and Hitachi are eligible to supply the trains. However, it was found out that both companies could jointly submit only one bid, leading to a single-tender situation, which the Indian side wanted to either avoid or a call to be taken “at the highest level”, sources said.
A Joint Committee Meeting between India and Japan, which could not take place earlier this year before the Covid outbreak, is expected to resolve the outstanding issues as they are beyond the purview of the Ministry or the implementing agency, sources said.
“A clearer picture on the possible delay will emerge only after the next Joint Committee Meeting between the two countries,” an official said.
Read | Bullet train project: Palghar finalises draft plan for acquisition of land
Sources also said that the stepping down of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe due to health reasons will not officially affect the deliberations. However, they acknowledged that it was Abe’s personal rapport with Prime Minister Narendra Modi that helped push the project in many critical areas.
According to the original feasibility study, work was supposed to have started by December 2017. But currently, only about 100 hectares of the required 430 hectares have been acquired in Maharashtra. In Gujarat, owing to active support of the state government, the process to acquire close to 1,000 hectares will be complete by the year-end.
The Railways has also taken a policy decision to allow Indian companies to participate in tenders for civil construction, including the 21-km tunnel stretch and tracks. Three critical civil work tenders for the Mumbai station, and other large sections of the project, are scheduled to be opened in September.
Referring to the progress achieved so far, the NHSRCL spokesperson said: “About 63 per cent land has been acquired for the project and tenders for civil works for 345 km out of 508 km alignment (68 per cent of civil works) are already floated. This includes six stations (including one underground station in Mumbai). The works related to utility diversion are progressing well and the construction of Sabarmati passenger hub in Sabarmati has also started. The hostel building of High Speed Training Institute (which is presently being used for Covid patients) and training tracks in Vadodara are also completed.”
India’s first high-speed project falls behind
Completion of India’s first high-speed line, linking Mumbai with Ahmedabad, could take five years longer than expected, mainly due to delays in acquiring land in the state of Maharashtra. Srinand Jha explains the ramifications of the delay and the problems this will cause.
TRIAL running is expected to start on a 50km section of the 508km Mumbai – Ahmedabad high-speed line – India’s first high-speed rail project – between Surat and Bilimoria in the state of Gujarat by 2023-24. However, it looks as though passengers will have to wait a lot longer than expected to travel on the entire line.
Indications are that the completion deadline of the Rs 1.08 trillion ($US 14.3bn) project, which is funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica), will be extended by five years from December 2023 to December 2028. Mr Achal Khare, managing director of India’s National High Speed Rail Corporation Ltd (NHSRCL) said as much in a recent interview. “We would try to do something by 2023-24,” he said, hinting at plans to launch limited trial runs around that time.
Execution of the project appears to be going at a tangent. For example, while 94% of civil works contracts for the 384km Gujarat portion of the line have been awarded, revised estimates for project costs have yet to be calculated. “This is like putting the cart before the horse and could lead to future complications including possible litigation issues,” says a former Indian Railways (IR) official, who did not wish to be quoted.
Decisions taken in past months have been at variance from the terms of the original contract signed between India and Japan in 2017. For example, track laying work was recently opened up to Indian contractors and Japan Railway Technical Service (Jarts) has even signed an agreement with NHSRCL for training, certification and advisory services for track construction in two packages in Gujarat state, even though the original contract does not refer to the possible involvement of Indian companies in track laying.
In past months, the India government has pushed for the entry of domestic private entities in areas such as construction of steel bridges and viaducts, while the 2017 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) says that these structures would only be constructed by Japanese contractors using materials including cement and steel imported from Japan.
Eyebrows have also been raised at the NHSRCL’s approach in unofficially dividing the project into Gujarat and Maharashtra (156km) packages, while deciding to implement the Gujarat portion first. Last month, the NHSRCL signed an agreement with Japan Railway Track Consultants (JRTC) for track work on the 237km stretch between Vadodara and Vapi in Gujarat. Incidentally, sanction from the Indian Cabinet has not been obtained for such decisions. According to ministry sources, railways minister, Mr Piyush Goyal, is said to be unhappy with some of the decisions taken by the NHSRCL.
Land acquisition
The India-Japan MoU includes the precondition that civil works can start only after 80% of the land required for the project has been acquired. But the NHSRCL had acquired only 23% of the total land requirement of 432Ha in Maharashtra up to February.
With unending tussles over land acquisition in Maharashtra state and continuing disagreement between India and Japan over revised project costs, the two countries have apparently decided to hit the ground without waiting for critical issues to be resolved. At face value, this is a sensible idea except when one looks at the fine print.
Around 80% of the projected ridership, as calculated in the Detailed Project Report (DPR), is expected to be generated by people travelling between Mumbai in Maharashtra and Ahmedabad in Gujarat. If the project is implemented in phases, by connecting just two or three cities in Gujarat initially, the low anticipated ridership on the Gujarat section would not cover operating costs. Therefore, the big question is, will Jica continue to fund a project that is designed to operate at a loss until the entire line is completed?
“Partial opening of a standalone HSR line would be meaningless and would hold only symbolic value,” says rail consultant and former IR manager, Mr Sudhanshu Mani, who is known as the pioneer of India’s indigenous Train-18 180km/h EMU project. “Such an approach would also lead to an extension of the completion targets.”
The revised approach on project delivery apparently suits both India and Japan. In the midst of the raging coronavirus pandemic, India finds advantage in kick-starting the project prematurely in order to revive its sagging economy, even though Jica will apparently need to pump in funds to cover the tender contracts that have been awarded for the Gujarat section.
Facing negative interest rates, Japan is apparently keen on getting to work on the 26km underground section from Bandra Kurla Complex to Kalyan Shilphata in Mumbai. This Rs 220bn section will enable Japan to demonstrate its high-speed rail technology. Japan also wants to get on with manufacture of the fleet of series E5 Shinkansen trains to operate the line. India is committed to buying 49 trains at an estimated cost of Rs 100bn. Six of the trains will be supplied as kits and assembled in India.
Khare, who retires in June, will also have the chance to leave a legacy as an action oriented official. NHSRCL spokesperson, Ms Sushma Gaur, says the corporation is attempting to extract the best in the challenging circumstances. “The entry of Indian players will bring down costs and also further India’s goal of being a self-reliant country,” she says.
However, former Railway Board member, Mr Subodh Jain, has a different opinion. “Such an approach may earn brownie points for policy makers in the short run, but will eventually hurt the project,” he predicts.
Project data
Line length 508.1km
Elevated 469.4km
Tunnel 25.8km
Embankment/cutting 12.9km
Stations 12
Maximum speed 320km/h
Journey time (limited stop) 1h 58min
Journey time (all stations) 2h 57min
Trains 24 10-car
Passengers/train 750
Trains/day/direction – peak 3
Trains/day/direction –
off-peak 2
